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While there may be "little budgetary tolerance for what amounts to corporate librarians to curate these document collections" librarians (without the quotes) are the best prepared professionals to aggregate and organize such collections so that every document is accessible.
While I agree that a lot of time and money is wasted in pushing documents around, I also don't think the only solution should be better document management. We should also be weaning ourselves from being so document-centric. What good is a 6 month old retrieved document if you can just as easily -- if not more easily -- pick up the phone and talk with the author about what is happening now, not 6 months ago when the document was created? It's too easy for document management to become an end in itself, divorced from real world collaboration and work.
I totally and completely agree: emphasis should be put on getting the job done and getting something to work no matter what. Documentation isn't necessary. Especially not when 6 months down the road the person who had really good reasons to write the convoluted code or hidden triggers was laid off or left for greener pastures. Spending hours figuring out someone else's code to fix a work item only helps guarantee job security.
[/SARCASM for those who missed it.]
I think if a company encounters issues with too much documentation is probably a sign that their documentation process is disorganized and not managed properly, hence the need for good document management processes and procedures.
[/SARCASM for those who missed it.]
I think if a company encounters issues with too much documentation is probably a sign that their documentation process is disorganized and not managed properly, hence the need for good document management processes and procedures.
We should be concentrating on information management, not document management. Information has characteristics - it has a traceable history, a group of people responsible for its creation and update, comments by consumers, a permanent address, etc. It may manifest in the form of a document, but probably only for convenient distribution. Applications like PageSeeder (http://pageseeder.com.au/) make light work this.
so are a lot of the people who use them. I agree with you that managing information is the ideal, but it's not going to happen immediately. Like any major change -- and this is a major change in attitude -- it will have to be accomplished through education and attrition, rather than forcing a new concept down people's throats. That approach does not work well, and never has. There will always be those who lack either the desire or ability -- or both -- to change. A bureau chief in my agency has his secretary print out his emails, because he doesn't want to (or can't) log on to his computer.
Change will come; it will be a lot easier if you don't push it too hard.
Change will come; it will be a lot easier if you don't push it too hard.
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